


Unto Themself

by freoduweard



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, Book 03: Oathbringer Spoilers, Gen, Gift Exchange, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 00:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freoduweard/pseuds/freoduweard
Summary: Entry for the Cosmere Gift Exchange for Maeple.Vorin society binds its people with strict categories of what they can and cannot be, what they can and cannot do. But what of those who don't quite fit? What of those who exist beyond the confines of those narrow definitions?





	Unto Themself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maeples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maeples/gifts).

> I hope you like it, maeple!
> 
> Words between '<' and '>' indicate speech in Riran.

Adolin whisked out of the room, the child bouncing with excitement as he darted off to the sparring grounds and that odd combat instructor of his. A touch of sadness tinged the edges of Evi’s smile as she watched him go — even the _ Alethi _ didn’t usually start their children fighting this early, but the lessons were proving a remarkable outlet for the boy’s energy and fickle attention, and so she could only begrudge the violence so much.

Renarin, a shadow beside her skirts, stared longingly after his brother. It wasn’t simply that her eldest had left while their game was still unfinished, with toy soldiers lined up in ranks and marching around terrain made of pillows and crumpled rugs — there was an unspoken hunger in Renarin’s eyes. He _ yearned _ to follow Adolin out that door.

And he could not — denied by age but even moreso by the shaking fits, a weakness that stopped his sword-training before it could even begin.

Evi closed her eyes, releasing a sigh so soft it could be mistaken for a simple breath. “Renarin, would you like to continue playing, or shall we clean this up?”

He did not answer, his eyes on the door, and so Evi waited until he shook his head and turned aside to begin diligently smoothing out the rug and picking up the toy soldiers one by one. Evi knelt down as well, picking up toys and handing them over so that Renarin could arrange them in their box to his own liking. As he took one of the painted wooden soldiers from her hand, she said, “You could go and watch Adolin practice, if you wished.”

The sorting paused. Renarin fiddled with the toy he’d taken from her, running the pads of his fingers over its helm. “...I’d want to go down and fight too. I want…” A pause, gaze fixed on the soldier toy. “The next time Father comes home, I want to show him how good a son I am.”

Evi’s heart broke. It was a familiar feeling.

She pulled her feet in closer, skirts rustling, and suppressed the agony roiling in her chest. She would not let her children see such turmoil. “Do you want to fight to show others that you’re a man, dear heart, or do you wish to fight for fighting’s sake, like your brother?” She avoided giving him the option of _ ‘do you wish to fight so that your father will love you’ _, for she did not want to ever put such hopelessness into Renarin’s heart. 

He blinked up at her, though at her cheek rather than her eyes, scrunching striped eyebrows in obvious confusion as he twisted the little toy soldier in his hands over and over. “Girls don’t fight—”

_ Oh, my brilliant little star. Spoken like a true Alethi. _

“—and I.” Twist, twist, twist, the soldier turned in chubby child hands, already quick and clever in their movement. “I _ want _ to fight — like ‘Lin, like Father.”

The weight of what was left unspoken could rival a mountain.

Evi bit the inside of her bottom lip. Did her little one perhaps feel like a girl, but his desire to fight led him — her? — to believe otherwise, since the roles the Vorin people bound themselves to restricted women from battle?

But then, when she sat them in her lap to read to them, he often liked to trace the sweeping, pointed script on the page, little fingers following each swoop and line with meticulous precision. _ ‘That is the sound ‘ch’,’ _ she would pause and tell Renarin, or _ ‘That is the writing for ‘b’.’ _ and watch with pride as their eyes and fingers traced the writing in understanding. That, the Alethi taught, was for women.

Not for the first time, she mourned the constraints of this kingdom she and Toh had fled to, that they would lead her child to believe that they could be man, woman, or ardent, and nothing _ more_. At this point in her life, Evi knew that she would never truly understand why these Vorin people would deny all the myriad facets of life to their children, or even more, define them by which path they chose.

_ And what of those that defy the confines that their people would bind them in? _

Perhaps that was the difficulty that Renarin struggled with, perhaps not. Raised in this Alethi environment of conflict and boundaries, forced into a single choice of ‘man’, ‘woman’, or ‘neuter’, they might feel different and never even know that there were possibilities beyond those, one more alienation to set them apart. But how to explain the existence of such concepts to one so young…?

He sat beside her, tucking his feet in one overtop the other, taking hold of his ankles and swaying slightly, the motion so tiny that most would miss it unless they were watching closely. But Evi saw. She knew what to look for.

Lifting her uncovered hand, she asked, “May I?”

Renarin nodded, accompanied by a more noticeable side-to-side rock, and his eyelashes fluttered as she ran her fingers gently over their head, the soft, rhythmic strokes parting gold-streaked black like inlay in obsidian. The sight sparked an idea. The Alethi — and her husband amongst them — scoffed at the beliefs of the home she had fled from, but she had already gifted her children with her first language, and to give them a different _ perspective _ would be an even greater blessing, one that she has few opportunities to bestow.

“Did you know, my little star, that back in Rira, where I come from, there are people that decide when they wake up in the morning if they wish to be a man or a woman that day? And there are some who go their whole lives as neither — not as ardents do, in renouncing part of themselves, but going further and choosing to not be constrained by being _ either_.

“It is like your name.” Surprised at that, he glanced up, his feelings betrayed only by the slight widening of his eyes — _ blue blue blue, your father’s eyes_. She brushed a wayward strand of hair away from his forehead. “_Your _ name means _ yourself _ — not tied to anyone or anything but you, free to make of yourself what you will, and not be beholden to how other people would try to define you.”

There was a stir there behind widening, soft blue eyes, perhaps even the beginning of an understanding, and the soldier turned turned turned in little hands. Evi smiled down at them, brushing aside unruly locks that fell forward across their face, keeping to the same steady rhythm in her touch.

“<You wish to fight, a desire that comes from your heart, but you also enjoy the puzzle that is understanding writing, don’t you? The puzzles of patterns and fabrials? Your tutors and others tell you that you cannot have both, for one is for men and the other is for women. For both, they say you must be an ardent, but that doesn’t feel right to you, does it?>” The speech of her homeland was a bittersweet relief on her tongue, tasting of _ home _ and _ exile _ both. Any passing Alethi might look in with a hint of disdain upon hearing the foreign words, but for them to hear the highprince’s wife teaching her child ideas that clashed with the very fabric of their culture…

She tried so very hard to be part of them, to be a good Alethi wife and lady, but she was also a mother, and she would not see her children bound by unseen shackles.

“<No matter what they tell you, it is _ all right _ to wish to read or study or design if you are a man, and it is _ all right _ to wish to fight if you are a woman. You may be a kind of person who does all of these, or none, and yet does not call themselves either man or woman, or an ardent. Doing any of these things does not prove that someone is one kind of person or another — if a woman takes up a blade or bow, she is still a woman, and fighting does not prove her a man.>

“<Your desire to do things does not determine what you are.>” Evi laid her hand over Renarin’s chest, the faint thump of a heartbeat beneath her palm. “<Only you do.>”

**Author's Note:**

> The Iriali/Riran religion of "the One" feels like it would be very conducive to a culture where nonbinary people and others could thrive, given the beliefs it espouses that "Each fragment of the One's mind has its own body with different passions and inclinations. They exist in variety to experience all kinds of thought." (from the Coppermind), especially in contrast to the rigidly gender-locked structure of Vorin society. And who better to impart even that sort of concept to the Kholin kids than their mother?


End file.
